The Breakdown of Perspectival Space (and the rise of Self-Reflexivity in Modern Art)

The Breakdown of Perspectival Space

(and the rise of Self-Reflexivity in Modern Art)

Surface Depth Surface

Medieval Renaissance Modernism500 -1300 1300 -1600 1850 -1960

Early Renaissance

Early Renaissance

The Annunciation,

Fra Carnevale (1448)

Early Renaissance

Flagellation of Christ, Piero Della Francesca (1450)

The Ideal City

EarlyRenaissance

Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Jan Van Eyck (1435)

People slowlybecome more“Naturally” depictedin that space.

More “Naturally” depicted.

Early Renaissance

The Arnolfini Portrait,

Jan Van Eyck (1434)

Early Renaissance

The Arnolfini Portrait,

Jan Van Eyck (1434)

Renaissance

Renaissance

Bodies eventually get fleshed out.

Renaissance

Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)

High level of articulated detail.

Renaissance

Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)

High level of articulated detail.

Renaissance

Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)

High level of articulated detail.

Surface Depth Surface

Medieval Renaissance Modernism500 -1300 1300 -1600 1850 -1960

Renaissance Modernism1300 -1600 1850 -1960

Rococo

Renaissance Modernism1300 -1600 1850 -1960

Symbolism

Renaissance Modernism1300 -1600 1850 -1960

Romanticism

Early Modernism

Early Modernism

Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David (1784)

•Two Planes•Theatrically Staged

Early Modernism

Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David (1784)

•ForegroundNo background

Early Modernism

Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault, (1818–1819)

•Pile of PeopleBlobby forms

Early Modernism

Orphan Girl at the Cemetery, Delacroix (1824)

Early Modernism

•HyperrealismLarge EyesColor

Early Modernism

Massacre at Chios,Massacre at Chios,Eugène DelacroixEugène Delacroix

(1824)(1824)

Early Modernism

Oath of the Horatii, Delacroix (1824)

•Too Real, Harsh“Attack on Art”

Massacre at Chios,Massacre at Chios, Eugène Delacroix (1824) Eugène Delacroix (1824)

Early Modernism

Early Modernism

The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken J. M. W. Turner (1838)

•Surface EmphasisPre-Impressionism

Early Modernism

The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken J. M. W. Turner (1838)

•Surface EmphasisPre-Impressionism

Modernism

Modernism

The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)

• Nude & dressed men (in contemporary setting)Nude & dressed men (in contemporary setting)• Combination of GenresCombination of Genres

– still life, landscape, nude, portraiturestill life, landscape, nude, portraiture

• Background figure too largeBackground figure too large• Nude is washed outNude is washed out

Modernism

Modernism

The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)

In 1863 Painting with a capital “P” was born.

It was now a Medium.

Modernism

Modernism

• Never prior to Manet had the breach between the taste of the public and changing types of beauty—which art continually renews—been so conclusively final. With Manet began the days of wrath, of those outbursts of scorn and derision with which, ever since, the public has greeted each successive rejuvenation of beauty.

—George Bataille

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

Modernism

• Reference Venus de Urbino

• Contemporary prostitute slippers

• Washed out skin• Look “matter of

factly” at viewer• Cold, strong,

young, prostitute

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• The laughter that lay in wait for Olympia was something unprecedented; here was the first masterpiece before which the crowd fairly lost all control of itself.

—George Bataille

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• Jean Ravenel, art critic, “What on earth is this yellow-bellied odalisque, this wretched model picked up God knows where and pawned off as representing Olympia?”

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• Paul de Saint-Victor, art critic, “The crowd gathers round Monsieur Manet's highly spiced Olympia as it would round a body at the morgue.”

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• Painters, and especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not share the masses' obsession with the subject: to them, the subject is only a pretext to paint, whereas for the masses only the subject exists.

— Emile Zola, 1867

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• Her real nudity (not merely that of her body) is the silence that emanates from her, like that from a sunken ship. All we have is the “sacred horror” of her presence .

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• Her real nudity (not merely that of her body) is the silence that emanates from her, like that from a sunken ship. All we have is the “sacred horror” of her presence—presence whose sheer simplicity is tantamount to absence. Her harsh realism—which, for the Salon public, was no more than a gorilla-like ugliness—is inseparable from the concern Manet had to reduce what he saw to the mute and utter simplicity of what was there.

Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)

Modernism

• Viewer is propositioning barmaid

• Bored, resigned expression

• Snap-shot-like composition (feet in corner)

• Impossible mirror image

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Édouard Manet (1881-2)

Modernism

• Manet, from the very start, had put the image of man on the same footing as that of roses or buns.

• —George Bataille

Arcadia(a videogame that combines genres)

• Created by Gamelab at MIT• http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/arcadia.jsp